Paul Donovan: Night time classics

We celebrate the Radio 3 programme that runs from 1am to 7am and keeps insomniac Britons awake while also serving 1 million listeners worldwide

Controller of BBC Radio Three Roger Wright at Broadcasting House (Susannah Ireland)
Today, hours after the clocks went forward all over Europe to mark the start
of summer time, music comes forward from all over Europe to mark the start
of Holy Week. Radio 3’s EBU Day is a Palm Sunday feast for believer and
non-believer alike. Orthodox chant live from Sofia, the city that
Constantine the Great called “my Rome”; Rossini’s Stabat Mater, from the
actual Rome; Elgar’s mystical Dream of Gerontius, about a dying man’s
prayer, live from Dresden; Tudor plainchant from Cambridge; and some
spectacularly beautiful works from Paris, Madrid and Tallinn, the ancient
capital of Estonia.

There is no escaping the word “from” here, but the traffic is two-way. Radio 3
engages in “to” every night of the year. In what must be British
broadcasting’s best-kept secret, Radio 3 makes a programme of classical
music for night owls across Europe. Here, it is called Through the Night,
and